Other Famous People Who Were (Or Planned To Be) In Other Hobbit Movies

Were there other famous people attached at one point or
another to adaptations of the J.R.R. Tolkien stories? There were!
In fact, several non-Peter Jackson hobbit movies have already been
made. You may have even seen some of them, when you were a little
child, or when you were smoking marijuana “hobbit weed” and
looking at
videos on the Internet this very afternoon!

If you have kids and/or once enjoyed the indoor sport of
Dungeons & Dragons, then you will probably go see The
Hobbit next weekend. But what if Magneto and
that guy from The Office weren’t in the movie, then
what? Other people would be in the movie. Other people
have been in such hobbit movies. People like Andrew
Breitbart’s father-in-law.

Andrew Breitbart’s Father-In-Law, Orson
Bean

Game-show panelist Orson Bean actually was Bilbo Baggins
in the animated 1977
version of the tale. Later, his daughter married Andrew
Breitbart. According
to Breitbart, Bean “was once blacklisted as a Communist back in
the ’50s. Ed Sullivan called him to say he could no longer book him
on the show.”

American badass/crazy director John Huston

Guess who John Huston voiced in the same Rankin/Bass cartoon
production? Gollum! No, that isn’t true. He was Gandalf, obviously.
This
version is weird and kind of ’70s-Saturday morning, but
it’s all right, too. Huston recites the whole long dwarf poem,
about the Misty Mountains and all that, with Robert Plant.

John Lennon, as the Gollum

The greatest adaptation of Lord of the Rings to
never happen was a
Stanley Kubrick-directed live-action film starring The Beatles.
John Lennon was the force behind this idea. (Lennon also attempted
to make a movie of Philip K. Dick’s Ubik, which would’ve
jump started the cult author’s move to Hollywood favorite by a
dozen years.) In the Beatles version, Lennon had chosen the role of
Gollum.

Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, as Sam and
Frodo

The Beatles had completed two hugely successful movies, A Hard
Day’s Night and HELP!, and they were looking for
their next project—which would turn out to be the much less
successful television movie/dope freakout Magical Mystery
Tour. Had Lennon got his way, McCartney and Starr would’ve
played the young hobbits who leave the Shire to start a band and
get high.

George Harrison as Gandalf

How did Tolkien turn down this idea? He hated hippies! Also, he did
not want his beloved book to turn into another marketing device for
the Beatles. And something-something about “film rights.” But when
it came down to it, Tolkien said no to The Beatles. And then,
eventually, he died. So, never say no to The Beatles!

They never made an official Tolkien movie, but they sure made some
crappy hobbitesque sequences for their 1970s concert film, The
Song Remains the Same. Also, various characters and settings
show up in Robert Plant’s teen-aged boy lyrics. And, on Monday
night on the David Letterman show, the three surviving members were
Letterman’s interview guests. When Letterman noted the band’s
affinity for songs about vikings and sex, bassist/arranger John
Paul Jones said,
“You missed the bit about vikings having sex with hobbits.” And
that’s how Marc Bolan was born! No just kidding that’s how orcs are
born.

And finally, because why not, here is a picture taken by Peter
Jackson, from
Ian McKellen’s Flickr. It’s a picture of God wearing John Lee
Hooker shades. Also, punk rockers never wanted to be the hobbit.
There is no feature to be written about The Clash or Patti Smith or
X optioning Fellowship of the Ring.